Tau Zero’s founding architect (and the former head of NASA’s Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project) weighs in on the kind of technology we see in the new Star Trek movie and ponders what it would take to make at least some of it real.
by Marc Millis
Another Star Trek film just hit the screen – with the venerable Starship Enterprise and its iconic warp drives and in-flight gravitation. How close are we toward realizing such a fantastic “Starship Enterprise”? How do such visions compare to other starflight pursuits? And finally, what is being done about it?
STARFLIGHT CHALLENGES AND OPTIONS
To send a spacecraft to our nearest neighboring star system (Alpha Centauri is over 4 lys distant) within a human lifespan would require a speed of roughly 1,000 times faster than the Voyager spacecraft. The two Voyager spacecraft were launched by NASA about 3 decades ago, and are just now passing through the edge of our solar system, at a distance of roughly 1/500th of a light year.
To increase speed by a factor of 1,000 requires at least 1,000,000 times more energy, and then at least twice more if you want to stop at the destination. And think about the researchers left behind on Earth, the people who build the equipment and the experiments aboard the starship. Considering that a human lifespan is about 100 years (rough orders of magnitude), they’ll be able to track a mission only out 80 light years or so even if it’s moving close to lightspeed. While that might be enough to reach a habitable planet (whose closest distance estimates span roughly 25-ly – 200-ly), the provisional estimates to reach the nearest civilizations (if there are any) are between 500-ly – 6000-ly. [Click for more destination info]. To reach these more profound destinations within the lifetime of the starship builders back home requires either faster-than-light (FTL) flight, or a much longer human lifespan.
Image: Star Trek‘s Enterprise, an icon of breakthrough propulsion. Credit: The Light Works (www.thelightworks.com).
Absent FTL flight, most starflight researchers explore probe missions based on foreseeable technology. Armed with estimates of what might be ultimately feasible within existing physics, they determine what further technological advancements would be needed to enable meaningful missions. Early projections suggest that probe missions with flight times of only decades might be possible. To develop that technology and to prepare the supporting systems to collect the energy to launch such missions, however, might take several decades or centuries. Those estimates vary wildly depending on which conclusion is being advocated.
When considering human interstellar flight, the prominent concept is to build self-sustaining world ships that can support many generations of humans on their slow journey to eventually reach habitable planets to colonize, or to just coast through space as isolated pockets of humanity. Not much work has progressed toward this theme, since we still do not know the minimum number of colonists required and the minimum life support to keep them going… including what societal structure can sustain peace and satisfying lives in such isolation for so long.
And finally, for those that want to reach “new worlds, new life, and new civilizations” within short attention spans, further physics advances are required. This includes FTL flight and other breakthroughs typical of the Star Trek visions. This motivation includes the desire to usher in a whole new era of profound technological prowess – new technologies enabled by further advances – targeted advances – in physics. Some have characterized this last approach like the crazy uncle who indulges in wild dreams and playful tinkering.
At this stage it is too early to objectively determine which of these pursuits is ‘best,’ in large part because there is no definition of ‘best.’ The motivations, pros and cons are so varied, and the hard facts still so uncertain, that the choice is more based on personal preference. From those I know who work on these, they seem to pick the version that they, as individuals, can contribute the most to making them happen.
Note – the Build the Enterprise website is not about a true starship, but rather something that just looks like the Enterprise with far, far less capabilities. If you are seeking the realization of the Enterprise, keep reading.
FANTASTICAL STARFLIGHT REQUIREMENTS
Star Trek made starflight look easy and other inspiring fiction contributed to our yearnings. According to Jeff Greenwald, in his 1999 book, Future Perfect, about how Star Trek affected people around the world: “… it fulfills a deep and eternal need for something to believe in: something vast and powerful, yet rational and contemporary. Something that makes sense.”
An important element of Trek that went beyond technology is its society: creating a cooperative culture that can harness the power of starflight without killing themselves in the process. In reality, when considering the potency of the energy required for real starflight, this is critically important. This subject could be book unto itself, and why societal and human aspects are an integral part of contemplating real starflight. Personally, I am concerned that this challenge might turn out to be harder than creating new physics for warp drives and controlling gravity.
Back now to the inspiring spaceflight physics. For fun, and to appeal to a wider fan base, here is a composite of some of the biggest visual inspirations for starflight, our “2001 Millennium Enterprise, C57-D.”
Image: The “2001 Millennium Enterprise, C57-D”, a kludge of favorite fictional vehicles: two alien slabs (with FTL transport capability) from 2001, A Space Odyssey; the 1966 Star Trek Enterprise; the 1977 Millennium Falcon (Star Wars); and the 1956 saucer ship C57-D from Forbidden Planet. Graphic courtesy of Aldo Spadoni, 2013, based on a rough sketch from Millis.
Regardless of your favorite fiction, when it comes to enabling such fantastical star flight, here is what we need:
(I) Faster-than-light (FTL) engines: Compared to the distances between stars, lightspeed is actually slow. It takes years for light to travel the distance between stars. Our nearest neighboring star system (Alpha Centauri) is over 4 years away at lightspeed. The nearest habitable planet might be anywhere from 25-ly to 200-ly distant. And to consider meeting new aliens for each week’s episode, our ship would need a naive cruise speed of at least 25,000 times lightspeed. The word ‘naive’ is used here to remind us that we don’t really know what happens to time and space beyond lightspeed. For traditional slower-than-lightspeed flight, Special Relativity tells us what to expect about our perceptions of time and length changes as we get closer to the lightspeed limit.
(II) Control of gravitational and inertial forces: This is a hugely important feature that often gets neglected in shadow of FTL. It is so ubiquitous in science fiction that many people do not even realize it’s there and it has breakthrough implications – plus it does not yet have a cool-sounding name to convey its essence. Picture your favorite fictional starship – where the crew is walking around normally – as if in a studio back on Earth. This means that the ship is providing a gravitational field for the comfort and health of the crew – in the middle of deep space where such fields do not exist. This would be a profound breakthrough!
But wait, there’s more. Given this ability to create acceleration forces inside a spacecraft, it is not much of a leap of imagination to suggest that acceleration forces could be created outside the spacecraft too – thus propelling the spacecraft. This too – a non-rocket space drive – would be a profound breakthrough.
But wait, again there’s more. The physics of being able to manipulate gravitational and inertial forces also implies the ability to have “Tractor Beams” for moving distant objects, and the ability to sense properties of spacetime that we cannot yet even fathom.
(III) Unprecedented energy storage and power usage: Last on our list of top requirements is having enough energy onboard to power our magical FTL engines and space drives. On Star Trek, they use matter-antimatter to provide energy (which is existing physics), by fully converting matter into energy. Think Einstein’s E=mc2. Our fantastical spacecraft – and even some of the technological versions – will need at least that much energy.
ARE WE THERE YET?
In the book The Physics of Star Trek, physicist Lawrence Krauss compared the visions of Trek to contemporary physics. But it did not go far enough. It only compared the methods of Trek to the physics, rather than the overall requirements, and it did not suggest what we can do about it today.
Progress toward Trek-like ambitions is actually being made. Notions of controlling inertial and gravitational forces, plus FTL flight, ceased to be just science fiction decades ago. Here is that legacy of some of pertinent publications:
1963 Induced Gravitation: Forward, R. L. “Guidelines to Antigravity,” in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 31, p. 166-170.
1988 Wormholes: Morris, M. S. & Thorne, K. S. “Wormholes in spacetime and their use for interstellar travel: a tool for teaching general relativity,” American Journal of Physics Vol. 56, p. 395-412.
1994 Warp Drives: Alcubierre, M. “The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity,” Classical and Quantum Gravity 11, p. L73-L77.
1997 Space Drives: Millis, M. G. “Challenge to Create the Space Drive,” AIAA Journal of Propulsion & Power 13(5), pp. 577-582.
2004 Quantum Vacuum Propulsion: Maclay, J. & Forward, R., “A Gedanken spacecraft that operates using the quantum vacuum (adiabatic Casimir effect),” Foundations of Physics 34(3), p. 477 – 500.
2009 Compilation of Approaches: Millis, M. G. & Davis, Eric. W., Frontiers of Propulsion Science, Vol. 227 of Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics, (AIAA).
To be clear, this does not mean that these breakthroughs are on the threshold of discovery. What is does mean is that these notions have advanced to where they are now attackable problems. In terms of the scientific method, the first step of ‘defining the problem’ has been completed, the second step of ‘collecting relevant data’ is underway, and some ideas have even matured as far as testing hypotheses.
For those who can handle a graduate-level treatise, the first scholarly book on the topic (scholarly means peer-reviewed, objective, with equations and with traceable citations) was compiled by myself and co-editor, Eric W. Davis, with the help of over a dozen contributing authors, and so many reviewers that I can’t remember. In 2009, this book, Frontiers of Propulsion Science, was published as part of the Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics series of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
For those who want just the executive level summary, here are short descriptions, along with some notes about continuing work. I’ve attempted to convey this sanely, between the extremes of sensationalist hype and pedantic disdain:
• Faster-than-Light Flight: Wormholes and Warp Drives are theoretically possible, but our theory is not yet advanced enough to guide their actual construction. These theories are based on, and consistent with, Einstein’s General Relativity. The ongoing progress (I rely on Eric W. Davis to track this for Tau Zero) mostly focuses on the energy conditions – how to lower the energy required and how to create and apply the required ‘negative energy.’ One conclusion already is that Wormholes are more energy-efficient at creating FTL than the Warp Drive. A recent account of those details is available as:
Eric W. Davis, “Faster-Than-Light Space Warps, Status and Next Steps,” paper AIAA 2012-3860, 48th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, Atlanta, GA, (January 9-12, 2012) (abstract).
Recent news about the work of Harold “Sonny” White at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has been a bit exaggerated, but the essence of the work is that it is an attempt to measure spacetime distortions caused by the presence of negative energy. Unfortunately, I do not have an article to cite about that hypothesis or the methods being used, since such information has not (yet?) been published. Although Eric Davis is tracking this for Tau Zero, even he does not yet know enough to render judgment. We shall have to wait and see, and hope that the information is submitted for rigorous review.
Additionally, Quantum Physics presents some tempting phenomena that might be relevant to FTL pursuits. A number of phenomena, such as ‘tunneling’ and ‘entanglement’ fall under the header of “quantum non-locality” – a term I learned from physicist John Cramer at the University of Washington, Seattle. That term encompasses the notion that quantum events or phenomena can exist over more than one place at the same time. Cramer’s attempt to test the possible time-paradox implications of such phenomena still remains incomplete. The last update I saw was this publication:
J.G. Cramer, K. Hall, B. Parris, and D.B. Pengra, “Status of nonlocal quantum communication test”, Section 7.2, Univ. Washington CENPA Annual Report 2010-2011, April 2011, pp. 94-95.
But wait, still again there’s more. The hot topics of Warp Drives, Wormholes, and ‘Retrocausal Signaling’ are not the only ways to ponder FTL, but they are the only ones in the peer-reviewed literature, so far. For the budding pioneers amidst us, here is a breakout of other ways of pondering FTL:
Image (click to enlarge): This diagram points out that there is more than one way to ponder FTL. The items in blue boxes are already in the scientific literature, while the remaining green boxes are some of the playful speculations we have heard along the way. Credit: Marc Millis, from the Tau Zero Foundation site.
• Controlling Inertial and Gravitational Forces (in-flight gravitation for crew comfort, maneuvering the ship without rockets, tractor beams, etc.): More than one way to generate acceleration fields has been published and both methods are theoretically consistent with Einstein’s general relativity [Forward’s 1963 paper cited earlier, and the Levi-Civita effect]. Both of these have daunting theoretical and implementation challenges, similar to Warp Drives and Wormholes.
Similar to the FTL work, there is more than one way to approach this challenge, as shown in this graphic:
Image (click to enlarge): There is more than one way to ponder how to create a space drive, and these have been sorted by the physics discipline in which each is based. The items in red boxes have been reliable shown to be dead-ends. Credit: Marc Millis, from the Tau Zero Foundation site.
The details behind this diagram, and the next-step research of each approach are available in:
Marc Millis, “Space Drive Physics: Introduction & Next Steps,” JBIS 65, pp. 264-277 (2012). Abstract available.
This is the area that piques my interest, more specifically the “Space Coupling Propulsion” block in that diagram above. I’ve been working on grant proposals to get that work supported – which involves going back to old works of Eddington and Mach, and scalar potentials where relativity is cast in terms of retarded potentials. For those of you who do not speak that level of geek – I’m trying a different approach to understand the coupling between spacetime (inertial frames) and electromagnetism. The work involves the design and test of new sensors, based on those older perspectives.
• Ample On-board Power: Nuclear power is a technological reality now that, if used for spaceflight, would greatly increase the extent of space activities. The power levels required for interstellar flight, even slower-than-light, are still beyond the accrued prowess of humanity, but optimistic trends suggest they might be achievable sooner than later. The power levels required for faster-than-light (FTL) were once astronomically high, but those values have dropped with continued research to where they are now just fantastically daunting.
Are there new ideas to harness vast amounts of energy? There are credible theoretical and experimental approaches to improve our understanding of “quantum vacuum energy,” but this field is still too young to have developed plausible methods of ample energy exchange. What is possible are miniscule energy conversions when dealing with small electrodes. Today, these serve as good tools to empirically explore this young topic in physics, but are not close to suggesting how to achieve the kind of energy levels needed for FTL flight — levels that might be impossible to achieve..
WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
If you want to become a practitioner in pursuit of Star Trek-ish spaceflight, you will need a degree in physics, a vivid imagination, steady rigor to work through the details and persevere through the setbacks, and the personal savvy to navigate amidst a world more interested in short-term returns, and sometimes even back to reruns.
For those who would rather support from the sidelines, Tau Zero will gladly accept donations and is now also open for memberships. If, by some chance, you are a generous philanthropist reading this and wondering if we have what it takes to run a whole program around this theme, the answer is “Yes.” I led the NASA project toward such ambitions, including developing the process to sort through proposals to avoid the detriments of pedantic dismissals and the lunatic fringe. Those details are in the last chapter of our Frontiers of Propulsion Science book. We have a network of qualified practitioners who would gladly assist, even if only for a modest honoraria. And if you are a researcher hoping to find funds for this topic, please let us know if you find any. As yet, we do not have enough funds to invite proposals.
Lastly, I should alert you that there are scams out there on these topics. Rather than risk the legalities of explicit names, please take this advice: If they claim amazing performance – don’t believe it. If they offer no test data to back up their claims, ignore them. If the data they offer has not been independently scrutinized, then look elsewhere. Conversely, the promising signs to look for include: The service providers have a track record of confronting these edgy issues in a manner where increments of progress are published in peer-reviewed journals. Quality practitioners are as open to the possibilities that an idea may or might not work, with the emphasis on getting a reliable answer, instead of hyping the claims or being dismissive.
CONNECTING THE DOTS – ONE VISION
This topic is at such an early stage that it is difficult to project into the future to see how these small steps might lead to the desired breakthroughs. To help fill this gap, I have leaped (below) into wild speculation and conjecture – science fiction, if you will.
First: a dose of reality. Consider how nature has been throwing us curve-balls regarding our physical understanding of space and time. Rotating galaxies do not obey Newton or Einstein, but rather these galaxies hold together as if some “dark matter” is keeping their stars within the galaxies. Next, when viewing our most distant spacetime, we see redshifts that suggest that spacetime is expanding faster than theory – as if some “dark energy” or “antigravity force” were accelerating the expansion of spacetime. Quantum physics, with its incredible predictive power and practical utility, also presents us with oddities like the quantum vacuum energy and non-locality. And finally, consider the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, whose properties let it serve as an absolute reference frame for motion relative to the mean rest frame of our Universe. This phenomenon is at odds with assumptions that the Michelson-Morley experiment and the very successful Special Relativity seemed to dismiss the notion of an absolute electromagnetic reference frame. In short, physics is not complete. New discoveries await – discoveries that might open the way for whole new classes of technology.
Now, armed with those uncertainties, consider that other perceptions about the relations between space, time, inertia, and electromagnetism might match nature better. For example, what about the older notions of inertial frames from Mach, Eddington’s other way of describing why light bends in a gravitational field, and the retarded potential perspective of deducing magnetism as a relativistic effect of moving charges. By combining these, it might be possible to first detect, and then induce, perturbations of inertial frames. Such transducers – which convert changes in inertial frames into electromagnetic energy – could reveal new phenomena, new waveforms within inertial frames. Those observations then lead to reversing that conversion – where electromagnetic energy is used to perturb inertial frames – creating momentary gradients that move matter.
This ability would be the beginnings of tractor beams and space drives. From there, imagine when those effects get strong enough to create 0-g recreation rooms on Earth, or 1-g habitats for long-duration, deep spaceflight. Powerful enough devices, ‘space drives,’ could propel spaceships faster and faster. As higher speeds are achieved, experiments to test various FTL theories could commence. Perhaps, just one of those theories might lead to the first FTL transport. And finally, with the combination of non-rocket space drives, cabin gravitation for the crew, and light speed travel… we would have our Enterprise.
Ad astra incrementis
Help us start taking some small risks, today, that might eventually escalate to fantastic starflight – enabling humanity to survive and thrive across the galaxy.
I have a copy of the “Frontiers of Propulsion Science” book. It is a very good overview of the entire field and of the remaining open possibilities for breakthroughs. Woodward has recently published his book “Making Starships and Stargates” (2013) which is a good overview of the Woodward-Mach effect. I highly recommend this one as well.
“It takes years for light to travel the distance between stars. ”
Marc, surely you know this is false. This is a persistent misconception so I worry that you repeat it. Light takes no time at all to travel, and with sufficient energy (heh!) STL flight time can be made arbitrarily brief.
“I’m trying a different approach to understand the coupling between spacetime (inertial frames) and electromagnetism. ”
This is puzzling since both SR and GR encompass EM, at least in the classical sense. Future discovery of new quantum effects, if any, will not invalidate our cumulative empirical data.
Marc, I enjoyed the show and I appreciated your contributions as well as that of Paul and the other participants. The discussions were reasoned, and informed, and not “pie-in-the sky” stuff. Here is the thing: my main problem with the FTL concepts – warp drives, et al derives from the lack of a perceivable power source or propulsion system that would ever propel my dream ship Enterprise across the cosmos. However, I think that you look on long term. Sometime during the next few hundred years, a crew of humans with enhanced life expectancy -for longer voyages- augmented by science and the experience of lifetimes spent in interplanetary space. Although I loved the depictions of wormholes in “Tunnels in the Sky”, “Contact” and the TV shows “Deep Space Nine” and “Stargate” , I strongly suspect that traversable worm holes are not ever going to be a part of the the physical world vice the purely theoretical.
While war/violence on a massive scale – witness the Congo, Bosnia/Kosovo, Cambodia,etc- still exist in an alive and unwell capacity, I also see the converse. The International cooperation and the interaction of various races/ethnic groups is simply something that I see as continuing to increase on a (I hope) “geometric” scale. Lastly, two years ago, I attended a Planetary Society conference in Mountain View – at which two of the younger panelists – one a Jamaican-Iraqi-American scientist , the other a young French doctoral student of Algerian Arab ancestry- represent the hopeful future . Perfect crew members for the Enterprise (smile)
Ron S,
Okay, Okay… “From the point of view of an outside observer”… it takes years for light to travel the distance between stars. The photon itself does not, uh, “age.”
Regarding: “both SR and GR encompass EM, at least in the classical sense.”
There is more than one formalism with which to present General Relativity (GR). The prominent approach (Einstein’s) uses Remannian Geometry. Back in the 1920’s the analogy of space having a variable index of refraction (function of gravitational scalar potential) was also vetted [Eddington] and lingers today under different terms. Conversions have been published for how to go from one formality to the other (which I have not checked). They are different ways of describing the same nature (think ‘particles-vs-waves’ if you need a reminder that multiplicity of perspectives is indeed possible).
If you dig into the details (and avoid the crappy papers on this analogy) one of the critiques is that reference frame issues arise, perhaps implying an ‘absolute reference frame.’ Now this is where one must be careful with not mixing up notions. The old ‘luminiferous aether” and the “Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation” are both ‘absolute reference frames,’ but the specifics of the aether have been dismissed, while the Cosmic Microwaves are a real physical observables that were discovered AFTER the 1920’s Eddington analogy fell into the shadows of Einstein’s Remannian Geometry. To my knowledge, our more recent observed anomalies (dark matter, dark energy, CMBR homogeneity, incompatibility of quantum and Remannian geometry, etc.) have not been viewed in the context of those other formalities.
Also recall that discoveries in alternate formalisms to not destroy the other formalities. For example, Einstein’s relativity added more detail to the laws of motion that the progress that Newton made. It added additional insights.
Since anomalies still exist, there is room for progress. The approach I’m taking is just one of many possibilities to see if these anomalies can be solved through different perspectives.
Until I complete the merging and re-derivations of these old perspectives and then compare that to data, I will not know if this approach will yield the desired outcome. What I am certain of, is that we will know more than if we are content to not look.
Does this help clarify what I meant?
Marc
Regarding progress toward peaceful world ship implementation – I have been way too distracted by other things, so I have not yet determined who are the most reliably productive pioneers on such topics. If any of our audience members have opinions on which researchers provide impartial and insightful information… or progress… on this topics, please tell Paul Gilster who those folks are.
Thanks,
Marc
I have yet to see the new Star Trek film – and I am loathe to give J. J. Abrams and his cronies a dime of my money – but judging by Phil Plait’s (the Bad Astronomer) review of the latest members of this alternate universe franchise, I think we will have to hope that the revamped Star Trek will somehow inspire the current generation to work on the FTL issues regardless of the fact that Abrams’ creation has lousy science among other numerous faults:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/17/bad_astronomy_review_star_trek_into_darkness.html
The original Star Trek really did inspire people to become scientists, engineers, and astronomers. The series science was not perfect but at least they tried better than most before or since. I am not sure what is going to happen now in this post-Star Wars Abrams infused era.
Another subject of study that is interesting regarding pseudo-FTL travel, which i pondered a while ago but i found cute, but essentially unworkable from an engineering point of view, was the notion of ergosphere treadmills.
summary of the idea: Kerr black holes have a region called ergosphere, where relatively to distant observers, objects seem to travel faster than light. If you put to Kerr black holes with opposite angular momentum, the region in-between of both BH has (presumably, no one has performed the actual calculation that i’m aware) an escape ergosphere in the direction ortogonal to the line joining both BH. The escape velocity of ships after they exit the ergo-region, is not FTL, but is a significant fraction of c. If you could have thousands of BHs aligned, with exact synchronized timing or their orbital periods and phases, you could get a window of time where a ship would ‘fall’ geodesically at one entrance and exit at the far end of the treadmill
reference to original question on Physics.SE: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/16977/955
something i forgot to explicitly mention but can be inferred from context: the pair of BHs have to be close enough so that their ergospheres merge
Since, energy requried and travel time are the irreducible problem
facing human colonization attempts, we must strike a balance between
them. The slower the ship the larger the ship must be in order to have sufficient endurance. The Faster ship requires enormous energy requirements. But is there a third way? There is, others here have mentioned it.
Machines, both robotic and industrial use, will have to lead the way. A ship could carry hundreds of them in limited space. We need only send
genetic blue prints for 23 chromosomes. The machines will create an
infrastructure on an earthlike planet that will be complete enough for
a population of 20,000 or so founding humans that will be created, reared and educated by them.
If we really wanted to insure humanity’s survival, making a couple dozens of these seedships would be something we could do THIS century. Assuming
we could reach 25% C it would present the posibilty of having a score human colonies in something like 1,000 years in the future.
We should probably reserve the closest suitable planets for direct colonization from Earth. This way there is a double wave of an expansion
effort eventually, long range and shorter range.
CatharSeamus: “the pair of BHs have to be close enough so that their ergospheres merge”
It’s an interesting intellectual enterprise, though a bit unrealistic. If the BH get that close together they are not only in a tight (and violent) orbit, but an unstable orbit. They will quickly merge (and hopefully provide a show for LIGO).
Marc, I was pretty sure you knew what you meant. My concern was the persistent meme out there that STL is necessarily slow, and always takes more than 1 year per light-year of (co-moving) distance. I think it helps to communicate the correct message.
As to the other stuff, I’ve said about all I really need to say. Whatever the theoretical basis, incremental or novel, the empirical data rulez. Of course the precision of lots of that astronomical data is not sufficient to exclude all novel theories but neither is that an excuse to get unreasonably hopeful about them. Carry on!
Regarding control of gravity and inertia, if you allow for warp drive: contract in front and expand in back and go FTL, could you not have a warp field in the ship itself that contracts and provides the gravity to keep folks walking on decks and not floating through corridors?
I point out again that bio-physics is out-pacing the physical sciences (mostly due to the application of physics to biology and micro-biology).
I think it very probable that in 100 years or so, humans may live 1000 years,or 10,000 years or lord-knows-how-long.
That makes STL a piece of cake.
(It also makes figuring out what kind of society we will be when that happens impossible to predict.)
Just an editing question: Are there numbers missing from this essay?
“To increase speed by a factor ofat least, ”
“Our nearest neighboring star system (Alpha Centauri) is over away at lightspeed.”
” our ship would need a naive cruise speed of at least. “
Thanks for the very interesting article. Just a few comments.
“Faster-than-Light Flight: Wormholes and Warp Drives are theoretically possible, but our theory is not yet advanced enough to guide their actual construction. These theories are based on, and consistent with, Einstein’s General Relativity.”
It should be made clear that Wormholes and Warp Drives are feasible within General Relativity only and negative energy (and negative mass) are hypothetical concepts since these haven’t been observed in Nature and are not predicted in the Standard Model. The energy state between Casimir plates is not negative energy. It has been shown in several papers (see for eg Motion Mountain Vol 1, p98 http://motionmountain.net/download.html), that Warp Drives and wormholes and unfeasible in Nature when Quantum Physics in considered. General Relativity is an incomplete model of the spacetime construct (but it’s the best confirmed theory we have at the moment that models the effect of mass-energy on spacetime curvature).
Regarding interstellar spaceflight, the many designs of starships the last 40 years have shown that interstellar flight is plausible and that there’s nothing in Physics to stop us pursuing exploring the galaxy. However unfortunetly exploring space is expensive and clumsy at the moment and unless _practical_ interstellar flight is made feasible it probably won’t happen for a very long time if at all (things might get a bit worrying for us after 200 years). The first reason for this is our reliance on chemical rockets to access LEO (large expense to launch a small payload). Space companies are in the business of making money that is launching satellites etc so little research if any is done in BPP to changeover from chemical propulsion to reach orbit. NASA is not interested in BPP as they won’t even put aside $1M/year to support basic research. The space elevator, Skylong project and external nuclear pulse propulsion have their limitations.
They got something right in the first StarTrek movie, the requirement for practical interstellar flight is to be able to launch a large payload from the ground (like a starship say 400m long) into orbit 150Km up at low cost. Building starships in orbit makes interstellar flight not practical. Whether Physics would allow this should be investigated. I think in your list “Inertia, Energy, Gravitation” or Gravity Control Propulsion is worth looking into.
Cheers, Paul
Brute force speed sounds kind of cool. Anyone care to expand on that one?
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Thank you, finally…i’ve been waiting for this subject to appear here. I am reminded of my high school physics and chemistry teacher. I asked him how fast an electron traveled when it jumps to/from various orbitals. He said it does not “travel” from one to the other, it simply disappears from one and reappears in another when it absorbs a photon. I won’t tell you how many years i’ve pondered that one… suffice to say I believe we witness “FTL” everytime we switch on a fluorescent light.
Its not about covering ground between here and there. But do not wait for the other shoe to drop from me. My responses are limited…you must ask the right question. Bravo to Tau Zero. You’ve got the question right!…master physics first, then work the magic.
Correction, should be:
Motion Mountain Vol 5, p116
“In short, the inclusion of quantum effects destroys all those fantasies which were started by general relativity.”
Cheers, Paul
How much would it cost to build the starship Enterprise (sans FTL drive):
http://gizmodo.com/how-much-would-it-cost-to-build-the-starship-enterprise-506174071
‘Star Trek’ Spaceship Model Soars Into Stratosphere
by ELIZABETH HOWELL on MAY 17, 2013
A group of Star Trek fans launched a model of the famed fictional vessel to an altitude of 95,568 feet (29,129 meters) above Canada, or about 18.1 miles (29.1 kilometers), they told media.
The Karman line — a commonly accepted threshold for the edge of space — is at about 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, above sea level.
Still, the high-flying feat made the Canadian group quite happy, even though the ship made a suicidal crash landing at the end of its flight.
“We lost our engines,” said Steve Schnier, a member of the group that set Enterprise aloft with a weather balloon from Stayner, Ontario, in an interview with Canada AM.
Full article here:
http://www.universetoday.com/102213/star-trek-spaceship-model-soars-into-stratosphere/
Regarding faster than light, only a careful study of nature will show the way. One observation that has intrigued me are galactic jets. They have tracked the ‘blobs’ of material in them, and several of the jets appear to be faster than light (FTL). It is important to say that Rees (1966) showed that the jets can appear to be FTL and yet not be, if they are very close to our line of sight, ie: jetting towards us. However, it has been shown by Biretta et al. (1999) and Schilizzi, mentioned in Porcas (1983) that the FTL jets do not seem to be close to our line of sight.
At .9 times the speed of light, the [relativistic] factor becomes 2.294157338705618. If you were in a spaceship traveling at .9 times the speed of light … 1 year to you would seem to be 2.294 years for someone back on Earth.
–http://www.1728.org/reltivty.htm
That’s a very high speed (a speed that is so far away from our current technological capability as to be truly fantastical) for a very low relativistic return.
@AA Jackson 1000 year life span….”That makes STL a piece of cake”
Why? Nothing much changes except that the multi-generation ship becomes a single generation ship. All the propulsion energy, environmental recycling issues are still in place. You swap genetic drift issues for psychological ones (which may be worse). The only benefit I see is that the ship might be very much small – building sized, rather than small city sized.
Really enjoyed the show, watched it with my daughters who were equally fascinated. Here’s to hoping for some amazing breakthroughs in the coming years!
You want to colonize the galaxy easy and cheap?
Use a solar sail propelling a payload to a max 0.01C. Journeys to nearby stars take centuries, but require no fuel to either accelerate or decelerate (light from target star slows down the payload)
Inside the payload are the “passengers” – millions of frozen embryos (human, animal, seeds, etc.). Upon arrival, the first wave of embryos is defrosted and brought to term in an artificial womb.
The “crew” is an advanced AI that is programmed to appear and mimic the behavior of loving human parents, protecting and rasing the embryos in the new colony.
Once the colony is established, the ship that brough the initial colonists takes another frozen load to the next star with an earthlike planet.
Its a hybrid Human/Von Neuman machine approach. Wash, rinse, repeat.
In only a few million years, humanity has spread across the galaxy and each colony is in contact with each other via laser or radio, exchanging the only commodity that can be economically traded between the stars – information and knowledge.
@Alex Tolley
1000 to 10,000 year life spans would be absolutely and totally unprecedented.
Humankind has never seen such a thing.
How that could change philosophy , politics, social structures can not be predicted.
‘Time is the foe of individuals but hopefully not of mankind’
The human mind has a neuron structure that is capable of around several hundereds years of ‘data’ it is not without limit, madness may set in. I am struggling with the T.V remote at the moment , it may be a sign.
Alex Tolley, I don’t think 1000-10,000 year lifespans will change the public attitude, or their want of short term gains. However, for those who are obsessed enough to become billionaires, a second obsession is now possible, namely: creating an interstellar legacy within their lifetimes. After all who do you think will remember Bill Gates in a million years? Now think, who will remember the man who began interstellar colonisation itself!
I believe A. A. Jackson faulty in his analysis of his own proposition. He gives the nebulous explanation “How that could change philosophy , politics, social structures can not be predicted”. In reality, it is hard to see how economics doesn’t play a far greater role than those factors he listed.
If you have 50 billion dollars to build a starship, you would be very lucky not to run out of funding before the project is complete. If you instead funded it out of interest on that sum, you could spend two billion annually for centuries. Then it would be hard to see how you WOULDN’T succeed. This is especially so when the need for speed to be sufficient to bring a payoff during your lifetime has also been lowered by such a large factor.
I note in this article it is also suggested that starships could be converted to tachyons, and something has always worried me there. Is it theoretically possible for tachyon particles moving wrt each other to bond with each other without leading to situations whereby in some reference frames, some of these particles will apear to be subliminal. If not, wouldn’t time seem like it is flowing in backwards for the for the crew during the FTL passage.
@Rob Henry
Economics too , philosophy , politics, social structures are things peculiar to a history we know.
If we survive, and this complex technical civilization , that supports star faring comes to be, …, it will have to be demonstrated , quantitatively, how we can predict what it will be.
We face a future where history will not repeat itself.
(Unless we slide back into Road Warrior World!)
Regarding John Cramer’s research, I spoke to him on the shuttle bus to our hotel – we were both talking at “Starship Century” and UCSD was kindly paying for our accomodation. John explain that he had run into signal-to-noise issues with the off-the-shelf materials he was working with. The cascade photo-diodes he was using for a photon source were too noisy even when chilled cryogenically. So he’s investigating options.
Once we develop the technology to divert asteroids, starships shouldn’t be far off. We could deliberately divert them towards the earth, threatening our extinction as a means to securing the trillions in funding to build starships over the course of years rather than centuries…. This may seem drastic and malevolent but it might work.
@Peter
“could deliberately divert them towards the earth, threatening our extinction….”
I remember Carl Sagan warning , long ago!, that asteroid mitigation might be used as a WMD.
Does the 2nd amendment allow one to own an asteroid deflector as agent of Armageddon?
The TV show was fabulous. I watched it twice.
What wonderful Super Geeks you guys are, and it’s great to have you here with us on the planet. Taking the long view.
Lots of us are cheering from the sidelines. It’s not about “us”. It’s about the future.
“When considering human interstellar flight, the prominent concept is to build self-sustaining world ships that can support many generations of humans on their slow journey to eventually reach habitable planets to colonize” — So the concept of worldships arriving at asteroid belts to colonise, and saving any Earth-analogue planets for science, is not prominent? Consider this comment as raising its prominence, please!
Stephen
Oxford
I’m glad Dr. Millis is alive and well. Will have to check on Dawn mission progress? The possibility of ‘star trek’ like exploration is appealing. But the tech to do it seems rather strange.Civilization that could bottle antimatter as cheaply as we can make industrial aluminium may not really need to go anywhere? But you can only argue facts not speculation.
When discussing these FTL flight and other breakthrough propulsion ideas, I cannot help thinking of the (hopefully prophetic) words in Richard Bach’s famous novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull: “Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”
No, I think most people find the idea of sending starships to other quasi-Earthlike planets to settle them a more romantic idea than building O’neil style habitats out of asteroids. :-) Other than the sheer romance factor, settling exoplanets has the advantage that the exoplanet is already there, we need only adapt ourselves to it, while settling the asteroids basically involves building our new home from scratch.
Another problem is that if your goal is to build O’neil style habitats, people will question why we bother to go to another solar system at all. Why travel trillions upon trillions of miles just to build a colony on some rock chunk virtually identical to the ones in our own solar system? Unless you have some other motivation to leave and harvesting asteroids is just a means to the end of claiming the new solar system, this idea is not likely to draw as much attention among the public.
There is also the problem that space habitats may be finicky things when it comes to maintaining the onboard ecosystem. Perhaps our star travelers arrive in rather poor condition, out of fuel, their ship’s ecosystem failing, the population dropping, and in no fit condition to begin a massive mining operation, let alone maintain great numbers of space habitats. In this case they may choose to land on a planet and adapt to fit in the local ecosystem than attempt to remain in space.
Contrary to what is often seen in Star Trek, however, I suspect that settling an exoplanet probably means a lot more than just building a bunch of space houses and farms and moving in. Inevitably, the human settlers will have to adapt to conditions that may vary greatly from Earth. Even if the humans do not modify themselves to fit into a wildly varying ecosystem, over time isolated group of humans will begin to change and possibly even speciate from us over great spans of time… such changes are rarely explored in TV SF shows, but are almost certain for isolated groups like the descendants of worldships (or, dare I say, the descendants of crashed Starfleet crews beyond the easy reach of warp engines!!).
“In this case they may choose to land on a planet and adapt to fit in the local ecosystem than attempt to remain in space.”
On the other hand, and this is often forgotten, the probability of any habitable planet to indeed be habitable for humans as we are, are slim. It takes but a single kind of unknown microbe which the human immune system is incapable of coping with, because it has never evolved to deal with anything like it, in order to possibly completely wipe out the entire colony. Or, in reverse, a single life from brought in by humans to destroy the alien ecosystem. Or all plants might be extremely poisonous to humans (and here, also the inverse could happen).
Thus, when you have both the technology and society capable of constructing an enclosed habitat for thousands of years, the effort and risk to establish a space-based colony most likely will be far less than adapting to an alien biosphere.
From a pure colonization perspective, I think a planet like Mars, just a bit warmer and with a thicker atmosphere, and a protective magnetic field, might actually be much better than one with an established biosphere. It might not need any large scale terraforming just to live off a patch of previously deserted land on such a world, while at the same time there are no hazards from and to native life.
A. A. Jackson said on May 26, 2013 at 11:30:
“I remember Carl Sagan warning , long ago!, that asteroid mitigation might be used as a WMD.”
Here is that very paper from the distant year of 1994:
“Cosmic Collisions and the Longevity of Non-Spacefaring Galactic Civilizations” by Carl Sagan and Steve Ostro.
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/19498/1/98-0908.pdf
“Does the 2nd amendment allow one to own an asteroid deflector as agent of Armageddon?”
Seeing as Thomas Jefferson did not buy into rocks falling from the sky, I would have to say no. :^)
http://www.macovich.com/lots/lot49.html
Having finally seen the new Abrams’ Star Trek film, I have to hope that this generation will still become inspired to explore the galaxy despite this popcorn flick pretending to be a member of the franchise. The latest version of the Starship Enterprise is ridiculous from a technological and scientific stand and just about every other aspect. Apparently this version can go at any speed the plot requires and one can fix the warp drive with a few swift kicks.
http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=8105
Star Trek is morphing into Star Wars, and that is not a good thing for anyone with a working brain or the hope that the cinema will inspire the engineers and explorers of tomorrow. This just means that the Tau Zero Foundation will have to work that much harder to fill in the gaps left by the dumbing down of science fiction films.
Abrams accepted all kinds of compliments in the course of the TV documentary that he did not deserve.
Mr. Abrams just makes box office hollywood movies that will make money for the studio. Anything deeper only gets in there if it is not in the way of the popcorn. I still enjoyed the 3D and the great sound and the star trek theme at the end of the film. There obviously was not much relevant plot to be digested. If he seems to be becoming Star Wars, well, he is. He will be the director for those movies also.
Hopefully, Mr. Abrams will inspire young people towards the stars despite himself. Often, it’s better for youth to just not realize what can’t be done.
J.J. Abrams will never see another dime from me, after his FIRST Star Trek fiasco (he’s had lots of others in other genres too).
As for “Wormholes and Warp Drives are theoretically possible, but our theory is not yet advanced enough to guide their actual construction. These theories are based on, and consistent with, Einstein’s General Relativity.” That’s probably believed by fewer working physicists and astronomers than the number of climate scientists who don’t believe the evidence for AGW. Perhaps a few orders of magnitudes fewer….Don Quixote was a great subject for literature and theater; for science, not so much.
@A. A. Jackson
The greater the goal, the greater the price that must be paid. If it can be mortgaged over centuries then that would be less painful, but to build a starship in years or decades, though I don’t doubt that it would be possible, might cost the highest price imaginable: the entire planet earth, or everything. That’s why it will only likely happen if it’s absolutely necessary- we would have to have the mentality of the Russians during World War 2.
@coolstar
I am not sure what you are saying?
There is no minority of physicists and astrophysicists who accept General Relativity , it’s a majority , engineers too.
Binary pulsar 1913+16’s change in period fits exactly with measurements calculated by GR.
Frame dragging by the Lense–Thirring has been measured by Gravity Probe B data keeps closing in on the prediction by GR.
Stellar orbits about the central black hole of our galaxy have been showing agreement with GR , that is they don’t follow Newtonian motion inside ten Schoolchild radii.
GPS would not even work to the 20-30 nanosecond accuracy if engineers did not model the effects contained in the Special and General theories of Relativity.
There is more:
[url]http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2001-4/[/url]
Engineers have a saying “Good, fast or cheap – pick any two”.
Assuming the all interstellar colonization and exploration efforts have to be “good” (a succesful mission that results in an established, viable colony), your choices are either “fast” or “cheap”.
FTL is the “fast” but expensive approach.
Frozen embryo colonization is the “cheap” by slow approach.
But is is one we could soon with existing technology or soon to exist technology (like the artifical womb and advanced parental AI designed to raise the defrosted human children).
@andyet: in that case: FTL, anytime.
@Ronald: unfortunately you won’t be seeing FTL any time soon. Hyperdrive, warp drive, worm holes, etc. all require substances like exotic matter or matter with negative energy – AKA stuff that does not exist in the actual universe.
We could spend hundreds of years trying in vain to develop FTL, during which time we could have established a dozen colonies on nearbye stars cheaply using simple solar sails (which don’t require fuel) traveling at 0.01c and carrying payloads of frozen embryo colonists. All we really need are advances in AI (to serve as the ship’s “crew” and to be the robot “parents” who raise the first generation of defrosted colonists) and an artificial womb (which may actually be harder to develop).
If we want to invest in powerful orbiting lasers, we could propel sail starships to 0.1c, cutting the transit time from centuries to decades, allowing us to colonize hundreds of exoplanets in the same time frame.
So what’s your hurry?
@andyet: there you are right again, though I would prefer mature travelers in suspended animation to frozen embryos. You could then leave out the whole hassle of having to incubate and raise resp. the embryos and children, skipping two very vulnerable stages.
And 0.1c to 0.01c. The shorter in space, the shorter the space-related risks (partic. radiation and technical failure) to the travelers, be it embryos or hibernated adults.
andyet said on May 31, 2013 at 8:14:
“So what’s your hurry?”
Global economic collapse, societal collapse, nuclear war, biological war, overpopulation consuming up all of Earth’s resources, cultural apathy combined with ignorance and fear of the unknown, corporate and government self-interest and domination, large planetoid or comet impact, irradiation by a local supernova, advanced ETI considering humans to be a potential threat or future competition for galactic resources, subjugation or extermination by Artilects, virtual reality technology gets so good that no one ever wants to leave their artificial fantasy worlds, J. J. Abrams makes all future films in every genre – take your pick.
See also:
http://www.universetoday.com/29021/review-death-from-the-skies/
@andyet: Not having to deal with the perils of radiation, space debris, time dilation, cyrogenics, and all the other show-stopping hazards of prolonged space exposure make FTL, even if it takes centuries, the hands down best option.
“Space is danger and disease wrapped in darkness and silence.”
We don’t want to go into space; we want to skip through it like a bad movie.
FTL would be having our cake, eating it, and screwing the butcher’s wife.